Eleanor Mooton walks on her gardens deep in the moonless night, the scent of wet gardens and flowers calmed the anxiety and fear she had been feeling. Her brother and father refused to talk to each other ever since the raven from Dragonstone arrived. While her brother seemed adamant to rally behind the Targaryen King, her father did nothing but lock himself in his solar reading scrolls of history that held no meaning with war on the door. It was then that she heard the voices.
"…Has Lord Mooton agreed to march, young lord?" It was a man's voice, rasped raw, exhaustion filled in every word.
"He hasn't, Ser Allard. And I doubt he ever will." The next voice, she recognized instantly. Her elder brother Desmond's, was a low and steady voice sounded in the garden. "Lord Mooton fears to even touch the letters sent by House Darry and Duskendale, forget about opening letters of House Targaryen. He keeps them rolled tight, as if they carry the Winter Fever."
Eleanor froze hearing words of his brother, her ankles going cold, with wet grass against her hem of her gown. the sound of her own frantic heart a drum against the silence. Her heart beating loud with every beat fearing treason being planned by her own kin.
She ran across the hedge and stopped when seeing Desmond seated on a tree stump as he worked a whetstone against the edges of his longsword with practiced strokes. The wheting sound terrible and brutal to her ears. Ser Allard stood beside him, his mail glinting with a heavy steel helm tucked beneath his arm.
Desmond's eyes widen seeing his sister this late in the gardens. "Eleanor? What in the seven hells are you doing here? Go back inside."
Ser Allard bows stiffly, his movement weary with old age. "My lady. It may be for the best that you are here. Ser Desmond intends to march without Lord Mooton's leave, to answer the Targaryen call."
The sound of sharpening from the whetstone stills as Eleanor feels tears prickling down her eyes. "Desmond… why?" Eleanor's throat tightens. "Why risk your life for someone you've never met? For a king of rumours?"
Desmond rises from his seat, wiping his sword and sheathing it in, and closes the distance between them. His hand settling on her shoulders, pressing his warmth into her fear, "Because that is what loyal men do," he starts, his voice quiet yet fierce. "House Mooton has served the dragon for centuries. You remember stories of Uncle Myles that I told you."
Tears start falling from her eyes, unbidden and salty. She hated crying in front of her strong brother and nods. "The knight, bold as brass," she whispers the title. "One of the Prince Rhaegar's finest. He and five others stood against Robert's advancement at the Trident and fell."
Desmond's face, catches the torchlight and Eleanor notices that it was alight with pride. "Aye, many may have forgotten him, I have not. I know that he rode knowing Robert's hammer would crush him, knowing the cause was lost, but he rode anyway. Duty and honour, Eleanor, these things are not relics. These things live or die through our actions. If the name Mooton is to mean anything more than a red salmon on a tattered banner, it will be through this"
He exhaled loudly, breath shuddering for once. "I am heir to this House. And I will follow the true king, not some Lannister whelp perched on a stolen throne. If I must die, let it be for something worth the dying."
Eleanor swallows, her tears turning cold against the skin. "Will you go alone?"
Ser Allard gives a harsh snort to her words. "Hardly, my lady. Targaryen loyalty dies slow and hard in the Riverlands. Hundreds will follow, for many were waiting for this."
Desmond gives her hand a squeeze, in finality. "Talk to Father, if you wish… but he is not himself. Not since Uncle Myles fell beneath Robert's blow at the Trident. He sees ghosts every now and then, every time a warhorn sounds, he sees his blood in the dirt." He mounts on his his warhorse, in one fluid practiced motion after that. High on the saddle, he turns back to her one last time, face hidden in shadow.
"Tell him," Desmond calls out, his voice a low, filled with promise, "that I will make our House proud. And I will make Uncle Myles proud."
Then he rides out into the darkness, and many follow after him. Knights, spearmen and squires, carrying weapons and rushing out of Maidenpool.
The great hall of Horn Hill was filled with silence when Dickon Tarly stands up, shoving his chair back, reading letters arrived from Kings Landing and Highgarden. His mother, Lady Melessa, sat across the table, her hands folded tightly in her lap. She looked as though she were bracing for a war on her home.
"So it begins in the Reach, does it not?" she starts, her voice worn thin, like old linen.
Dickon's stern features softens hearing her words, but the line of his jaw remained iron-hard. "Father always warned it would happen sooner or later. The Lannisters and Tyrells do not trust House Tarly... nor do they trust Rowan or Ashford. So they mean to use us as a piece. Sending us to Storm's End to bleed for them together with men who have already bent the knee to Renly against Stannis Baratheon."
Talla, seated beside their mother, crosses her arms, her mouth narrowing in an angry line like her fatger. "They mean to test us, to force us to prove our loyalty in their war."
Dickon gives her a single nod. "Loyalty that we do not owe to them, certainly not to Lannisters. I would not even break my bread with men who follow Lords that kill babes in cradle for crown of their own."
Melessa studied him, a knot of worry tightening in her brows. "And what of Margaery, Dickon? You spoke fondly of her once."
A faint, rueful smile touches his lips, gone soon as it appears. "I fancied her Mother, for a while I believe. But my fascination cannot outweigh the honour of our House. And I find myself more curious about the king who convinced Father, a man stubborn as oak, a man who lives by the order, to march for him with only a single meeting."
Talla grins, a flash of mischief touching her lips. "So you fancy a king now, little brother. I hope its nothing like Loras?"
Dickon's face freezes, a mask of discomfort crossing his face. Melessa hides her small laugh behind a hand. But the moment of levity passes quickly as she leans forward, her voice a holding tremor in them. "Will you manage on your own, my son. Are you truly prepared to command?"
Dickon kneels before her, taking her hands. They were small and soft, unlike the hands of his father. "I will not be alone. Lord Ashford is coming. Father told him to stay in the Reach, to be here for this moment. He is one of the three lords of Reach who knows the King's plan to make Tyrells and Lannister kneel."
Melessa draws a shuddering, shaky breath and hold her son close before the war coming.
Lamps and torches paints the still pools of the Water Gardens, making them shine in otherworldly glow. Arianne Martell sinks into the cold water until it touches against her collarbone, her dark hair floating behind her. Nymeria lounges near the edge, her eyes half-lidded in sleep from the training she went through in the day. Obara stretched her long, tanned limbs lazily on the opposite side, not far from them.
"Do you truly believe King Aemon will marry you?" Obara asks, the question blunt as any Northmen words. "Not some other woman more convenient to his plan? A Westerlander, perhaps, or a Stormlander, to seal his hold on the rebelling kingdoms?"
Nymeria swims to her sister side and continues after her. "Dorne has pledged to him. He has our spears for the vengeance and by the deeds he did against man who killed Aunt Elia and her children. He saved us from Lannister, rescuing us from Black Cells. What more will he need from us? We've already bent the knee."
Arianne lifted her chin, in slow motion. The ripples of water gliding around her shoulders. Her face looking perfectly sculpted, in the glow of candles. "If he rejects me, then he rejects me. But I will not wait for his choice to be presented. I will walk to him and offer my hand first. He will know that the Princess of Dorne does not wait for things she is born to have."
Nymeria hearing her words gives a cynical smirk. "He is pretty and beautiful enough for such doings, I suppose. Pretty enough to drive half the maidens in Westeros mad."
Not far away, behind the carved marble column, Daemon Sand stiffened as if struck by lightning, hearing Arianne's words. Jealousy and anger twists his features leaving a bitter taste in mouth. It should be me, he thinks bitterly. I have loved her since she was a girl. I should marry her not some pale boy-king with dragons and a half-remembered name.
In his blind fury he stride towards the rookery, his tunic clinging to his wet skin. Anger made his hands shake as he seizes parchment and ink, scrawling a vicious, trembling indictment of Aemon's ancestry, reasons for his actions in Kings Landing and his plans for Dorne's princess. The letter meant as a dagger on Aemon's back.
But before he could tie the parchment to a raven's leg, a voice interrupts his actions. "Betraying your own liege, Daemon?"
The voice seem silken as any but far colder that he has ever heard from her. Arianne stood in the doorway. Nymeria and Obara flanked her, one lithe and looking mockingly at him, while the other tall and waiting for orders of his death, respectively.
"I.. I was not, princess-" he stammers, the lie plainly visible on his face.
Nymeria doesn't waste words on him. She moves with speed and snatches the letter from his trembling fingers, and hands it over to Arianne.
Arianne reads it once and her face darkens by the end, her face sad with betrayal. "You should not have thought to do this, Daemon."
Daemon's control over himself snaps, already frayed thin from her words by the pool. He starts rage colouring his words. "It should have been me!" he burst out, his voice choked with years of desperate longing and feelings for her. "You should marry me, princess! I would make you happier than that lanky boy ever could!"
Silence fills the rookery as Arianne's, previously sad yellow eyes sharpens, glittering golden like viper's. "Did you know," she starts softly, "that Lady Ynys, your stepmother, wanted you dead? She feared you would kill her children for heirship of House Allyrion. That is why Uncle Oberyn brought you here, to spare your life."
Daemon blinks, stunned, by her words. Arianne walks towards him, her voice dropping to a whisper. "Yet it seems you are determined to chase death no matter where you live."
Something flashes from behind her as Obara's hand, in a blur of motion, darts a thin needle, which burries itself deep in Daemon's shoulder. He gasps in a wet and ugly sound, as poison swift, cruel, begins to surge through him. Blood begins to seep, from his nose, eyes, and lips. His knees buckles as he tries to claw the dart out of his shoulders, but his hands were already numb.
Arianne kneels by his side as he falls to the knees, her expression unreadable and cold. She carasses her face by her hand, "No one will keep me from him," she whispers not just to Daemon, but a promise to herself. "Only his own words could stop me from pursuing him, not yours or anyone."
Daemon collapses fully, a breath rattling in his chest, as Obara walks to him and retrieves her dart, cleanly from his shoulders. Nymeria crosses her arms by her elder sister's side, watching the body breathing his last. Arianne rises from the ground, wiping a fleck of blood from her hands with sleeves of his clothes. She then looks at her cousins.
"It seems," she murmurs, her voice like silk, "that Lannister men crept into the Water Gardens tonight… and murdered a knight and a ward of House Martell."
The words were spoken as fact and Daemon breathes his last knowing the hubris he did in fighting Dornish in their own home.